


Wolf(ish)

by sprexico



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:57:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprexico/pseuds/sprexico
Summary: “Niall,” Louis starts, but Niall is looking at him with a concerned expression.“Lou,” he says. “I think Harry’s a werewolf.”





	Wolf(ish)

The job posting had had so many exclamation marks that Louis almost hadn’t applied. _RADIO DJ WANTED!!!!!_ it said. _EXPERIENCE PREFERRED BUT NOT REQUIRED!!!!_ it went on. _LOOKING FOR A BRIGHT AND BUBBLY PERSONALITY TO HOST OUR LATE NIGHT SHOW!!!!! LODGING PROVIDED FOR SUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS!!!!_ it promised, and he’d thought _what the hell, why not._

It wasn’t like he couldn’t use the change of scenery.

Now, though, on the train down for the interview, he’s not so sure. He doesn’t know anything about Holyhead, and he’s not really that sold about moving to Wales. His heart twists a little at the thought of being so far away from his sisters.

It’s just an interview, he reminds himself, you don’t have to take it. 

He does some cursory googling on the way down and all it tells him is that Holyhead is close to Ireland and most people don’t speak Welsh. Thank god, honestly, Louis has enough trouble with the accent, let alone the language. The journey is long enough that he’s letting himself worry – is he dressed well enough? His resume isn’t that impressive, he’s relying mostly on his charm to pull him through. What if they don’t like him?

  _Christ_ , he thinks. _You go through one breakup and suddenly you’ve got no self esteem? Come on, Tomlinson, pull yourself together._ What the hell was so great about Zayn fucking Malik anyway, what right did he have to still be all up in Louis’s head like this? It’d been months (okay, okay, a month) surely he should be past this by now? What was that thing Fizz had said to him before he left? Something about snorting lines and shagging nines. He hadn’t really been listening, but then again she’d also been hitting him with a pillow.

By the time he gets to the station he’s really hoping he’s got the job in the bag because moving away from the last five years of his life sounds really fucking appealing right about now.

 

///

 

The interview goes well, and the overly chipper woman from HR tells him he’ll know by tomorrow, so he figures he’ll stay the night rather than going seven hours back to Doncaster today. There’s a pub with a Rooms Available sign which looks cozy enough, and he figures he can probably get a drink or something too, check out the town a bit.

 The Harper’s Arms has a big roaring fire in the front bar and Louis is glad for it. It’s cold for February and he figures if he’s going to be living down here he should probably get used to it. Not that Doncaster is _warm_ exactly but they don’t have this _wind_ coming right off the Irish Sea. He’s not used to living this close to the coast but he’s already loving how everything smells of cool salt.

 “Buy you a drink?” says a voice from behind him.

 Louis looks up and over his shoulder and. Huh. Okay, _yeah_.

The tall, slender man attached to the voice looks like he’s only recently grown legs and walked right out of the ocean but in a way that suggests _mermaid_ rather than _sea creature_. It’s an embarrassing thought, but Louis has always been a bit of a metaphor man. Tanned, but in that nice outdoorsy way, he’s got longish hair and he’s… all limbs. He’s got nice hands, Louis thinks, and kind of sparkling eyes. He looks warm, but that could be the gigantic fishermans sweater he’s wearing, even in front of the fire. _Yeah_ , Louis thinks. As rebounds go, he could do worse.

 “Bold move,” Louis says, and kicks himself for it. _Come on, Tomlinson. Let the pretty boy buy you a drink._

 The man grins and something in Louis’s stomach twists a bit in a good way. “Figured I’d take the chance,” he says. “Am I wrong?”

 “No,” Louis says, gesturing at the empty seat across from him. “Louis. Hi.”

 “Harry,” says Harry. “Same again?”

 “Yeah,” Louis says, and as Harry turns to go up to the bar he finds he’s oddly nervous. This is the first time he’s done this… well, ever, really. He’s never really been with anyone but Zayn, and that was _high school_ , it wasn’t like –

 “So, Louis,” Harry says, sliding into the seat across from him, drinks in hand. “What brings you to Holyhead? You don’t live here.”

 Louis grins. “Sharp one, you,” he says, leaning back a little to take more of Harry in. “What gave it away? The accent?”

 Harry smiles that almost wolfish grin again. “I live with the bartender, he told me he’d rented you a room.”

 “Which one? The redhead?”

 “Nah, the lanky one. Nick.”

 “Lanky? Bit much coming from you. You’re like a baby giraffe.”

 Harry laughs, then, and his face is ridiculous. “You flirt with everyone like this?”

 Louis can’t help himself, he grins back. “Just the lanky ones.”

 Harry quirks an eyebrow, and Louis almost wants to launch himself over the table at him. “You mean the lucky ones?” and ah, fuck. It really is as simple as that.

 

///

 

He gets the call the next morning, Harry still asleep and sprawled over his stomach, to say he’s got the job. For the first time since Zayn left, Louis feels good and happy and hopeful. It might have something to do with the warm and sleepy stranger asleep on him, though.

 Louis looks down over Harry, taking in the details he didn’t see much of last night. He’s got a lot of tattoos. They run all up and down his arms and over his back. Louis can’t see much of his stomach, so he shifts slightly in an attempt to make Harry roll over.

 It works, and Louis feels that warm twist in his stomach again. God. _God._ Of all the gin joints in all the world, etcetera, he walked into the one where the hottest guy in Wales hangs out. Harry’s not Welsh, though; accent sounds closer to London. Cheshire, maybe? He can’t quite place it. The tattoos continue on Harry’s stomach and chest, and Louis can see he’s got some gnarly looking scars underneath them. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t think that would be appropriate for what is probably a one-night stand. He’s hoping it’s not, though.

 To the unending delight of Louis’s ratbag nature, Harry also seems to have four nipples. He wonders if it’s too early into this to bring that up. He doesn’t notice he’s been absent-mindedly tracing a finger over one of them until Harry stirs under him.

 “S’too early to be playing with my nipples, Louis,” he says, sleepy warm and nuzzling into Louis’s side.

 “You’ve been asleep for ages,” Louis counters, “I was bored. You’re a terrible host.”

 “It’s _your_ hotel room,” Harry says. “Technically, you’re the host.”

 “I’m not making you breakfast,” Louis says, but he’s grinning. “Actually at this point I’d almost be making you lunch. Do you need to be at work or something?”

 What he’s saying is _I don’t want you to go_ but Harry doesn’t have to know that.

 “Nah, I work late tonight,” Harry says.

 “What do you do?” Louis asks. He’s moved on from tracing the spare nipple to lightly rubbing the back of Harry’s head. Christ. _You’re in trouble, Tommo_ , he thinks to himself. Not too loud, though.

 Harry is quiet for a too-long moment. “I… monitor the tides,” he says eventually.

 “I’m a radio DJ. Or, rather, I will be. I start a week from Monday. That’s what I’m down here for. The interview was yesterday.” Louis knows he’s talking too fast but he’s worried he’s pried too far - although, for whom is _career_ talk too far? He’s so bad at this. God.

 Harry’s beaming though. “So you’re staying in town?” and Louis’s stomach does a flip.

 

///

 

He moves down and into the lodgings the station provides, and Harry doesn’t call for a few days but then he does and they settle into an easy routine that’s almost a proper relationship. They both work a lot but Harry’s good to wake up to and as the weather’s gotten warmer so has Louis’s general outlook on Wales.

 Louis has never lived this close to Ireland before, and he’s swooning at being this close to Niall all the time. Niall comes up for a lads weekend every month – Harry works a full overnight once a month, and Louis hasn’t been this close to his best friend in _years_.

 Niall is the one to suggest it, and Louis could have almost written it of as Niall’s typical Irish madness, except, well. It could almost make a lot of sense.

 “So what’s stopping you?” Niall asks, drunk enough to have a little slur to his words.

 “I dunno, Nialler, he’s… cagey. He’s mysterious. I’m not quite sure what he wants.” Louis is being overly dramatic, and Niall pegs a sock at him.

 “Mysterious? Hazza? I doubt it, Tommo.”

 “No, he… he’s got these scars on his stomach. Won’t say where they came from. And he’s from Cheshire but he lives down here and every time I ask him why he moved he always changes the subject and makes some allusion to like… I dunno, a _dark past._ ”

 “Scars and a dark past? Fuck, Tommo, ya make him sound like a – ” Niall stops, mid sentence, and frowns.

 “Like a what? What, Niall?”

 “Lou,” Niall says. “It’s a full moon.”

 “That’s it, I’m cutting you off.” Louis laughs, and goes to take Niall’s glass away.

 “Fuck you, I’m Irish, I’m not drunk. No, weren’t you saying something about the size of the full moon last time we did this?”

 “Maybe, so?”

 “So every time your Haz works a long weekend, has it been a full moon? Get your phone out, google this for me.”

 “Niall, you’ve gone off the deep end.” Louis feels oddly nervous. Like maybe he shouldn’t look this up.

 “I’ll do it then,” Niall scrambles for his phone and for a moment while he’s searching there’s no sound other than his fingers on the screen.

 “Niall,” Louis starts, but Niall is looking at him with a concerned expression.

 “Lou,” he says. “I think Harry’s a werewolf.”

Werewolves aren’t real. Werewolves aren’t real and Louis knows this but there’s still this weird panic spiralling in his throat like a caged hamster. Harold is not a werewolf.

 “Harold is not a werewolf,” he says, and Niall looks concerned.

 “Lou,” he says. “He’s always gone on the full moon, he’s got mysterious scars and a dark past he won’t talk about, he talks to dogs like they understand him, and he monitors tides for a living? Who does that? Lou, Tommo, he’s a fucking _werewolf_.”

 “Niall, you’re definitely drunk,” Louis says, and they drop the subject but when he goes to bed that night he can’t stop thinking about it.

 

///

 

He hasn’t spoken to Harry in a week. He can’t believe this.

 He refuses to believe he’s the sort of person who believes in stuff like this.

 He doesn’t believe in stuff like this. Even Niall, for all his talk of fey creatures who steal your children, doesn’t believe in stuff like this.

 Werewolves just aren’t real, but he’s still not spoken to Harry in a week, and when Harry shows up on his doorstep looking sad and confused he doesn’t really know what to say.

 “You’re avoiding me,” Harry says, walking straight past Louis into the hallway, and Louis can’t say he isn’t. “Have I done something?”

 Louis will not ask him if he’s a werewolf. He will not. He refuses.

 “Are you a werewolf?” he blurts out. _God damn it, Tommo_.

 Harry blinks. “Excuse me?”

 Louis does not look up.

 “Lou. _Why_ would you think that? Werewolves aren’t real, you do know that, don’t you? They don’t exist!”

 “Niall said – ” Louis does look up, sneaking a glance to see how much trouble he’s in, and to his relief Harry is smiling quizzically at him.

 “Niall said what, exactly?”

 “Well, you’ve got this… this dark past that you don’t talk about! And the scars! And your extra nipples! And you, you, you… you monitor _tides_ for a living? Who does that? What does that _mean_? And I never see you on the full moon and you talk to dogs like they can understand you, and you like your meat really rare, and I just… Niall said – ”

 Harry is properly chortling now and Louis is annoyed.

 “Lou. Love. I’m a _meteorologist_. My job is really complicated and boring, it’s easier to say I just monitor tides. I work,” Harry pauses to catch his breath, “at a _tide monitoring station._ You’ve been there. You’ve met my coworkers!”

 Louis buries his face in his hands.

 “The dark past is – Louis, Lou. It was mostly a joke. It was about my failed figure skating career, I thought I told you, I – how did you arrive at _werewolf_ out of all of this? There are so many more logical explanations – ”

 “The scars!” Louis blurts, even though he knows it’s insensitive.

 “Another skater and I crashed into each other very badly, his skates tore me up. He nearly lost an eye, that’s why I don’t skate anymore.”

 Louis could cry, he’s so embarrassed. “Then how come I never see you on the full moon?”

 Harry takes him into a very gentle hug. “Lou. I work at a _tide monitoring station._ Tides, moon. It’s a very busy night for us.”

 “Oh,” Louis says softly.

 “Oh.” Harry repeats, gentle, smiling.

 “I’m an idiot.” Louis says.

 “You are,” Harry concedes. “But I think I love you anyway, so if you could not ignore me for a week to be an idiot like, ever again, I’d really appreciate it.”


End file.
